Most Americans believe Congress is broken, as evidenced by a job approval rating of 18 percent in the most recent Gallup Poll. Change doesn’t come easily, however, when voters’ options are slim and none.

That’s the dilemma in Ohio and a number of other states where congressional districts look more like snakes or amoebas than a collection of communities. Known as gerrymandering, the practice of the politicians in power drawing the lines has resulted in zero of Ohio's 16 districts being competitive. The state’s Democrats are packed into four districts and Republicans have a firm grip on the other 12 seats. The only true contests take place in primaries, decided by those who identify with the dominant party.

Ohio’s General Assembly, in a burst of bipartisanship, put a measure on the state ballot in 2015 to improve the redistricting process for its own House and Senate districts. Called Issue 1, it passed with 71 percent support. However, legislative leaders have refused to move forward on similar changes to congressional redistricting, prompting a statewide coalition called Fair Districts = Fair Elections to threaten to put its own measure on the ballot in November 2017.

“At this point we’re assuming we’ll have to do a citizens' initiative,” Catherine Turcer of Common Cause Ohio said after the General Assembly finished its work for the year without taking up the issue. Her group is part of Fair Districts, along with the League of Women Voters, Progress Ohio, Innovation Ohio, AAUW of Ohio and others.

The coalition is still fine-tuning its measure, but it would forbid districts from being drawn specifically to favor a particular party or candidate. It also would put map-drawing responsibilities in the hands of a bipartisan commission instead of the General Assembly. In addition to those fundamentals, two criteria are at the core of the Fair Districts proposal, according to Richard Gunther, an Ohio State University professor emeritus who's part of Fair Districts and also helped author Issue 1:

Representational fairness. The number of Republican-leaning and Democratic-leaning districts should reflect the way Ohioans have voted in elections for statewide and federal offices in the past decade, about 52 percent R and 47 percent D, Gunther said. If Ohio has 15 U.S. House seats after the next Census, then eight districts should favor Republicans and seven Democrats. It’s not realistic to expect all districts to be competitive, he said, but he estimates two to four would be – up from zero now.

Minimal community splits. Counties, cities and townships shouldn’t be divided into different districts when possible and none split more than once. Currently, two counties – Cuyahoga and Summit – are each part of four different congressional districts.

The twists and turns were created to cluster as many Democrats in as few districts as possible and dilute the rest enough to make safe Republican districts. Hamilton County, which can confidently be called a blue county with its vote for Hillary Clinton last month, is split into two conservative districts – the First, which also includes Warren County, and the Second, which stretches through largely rural counties east to Portsmouth.

Gerrymandering obviously hurts Democrats in Ohio whose votes have been been rendered pointless. But it has also sidelined independents and mainstream Republicans, as tea partiers and evangelicals have effectively pulled the GOP far to the right in primaries. Extremists such as Jim Jordan of Urbana, Ohio, have created the Freedom Caucus in the U.S. House, a group of about three dozen conservative Republicans that has threatened to shut down government to get their way on trade and Planned Parenthood and pressured former House Speaker John Boehner of West Chester out of his job.

Fair Districts is made up of largely left-leaning groups, but a number of prominent Republicans, including Secretary of State Jon Husted and Gov. John Kasich, also have acknowledged the need for redistricting reform. Husted, a longtime proponent, continues to say the General Assembly needs to step up and address congressional gerrymandering despite the reluctance of outgoing Senate President Keith Faber and House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger. If the Republican-controlled General Assembly doesn’t act in a bipartisan way, reform will happen without GOP input, he said.

“They have the ability to prevent it, and if they don’t prevent it they only have themselves to blame,” Husted told The Enquirer on Tuesday.

He and Turcer both say voters are "fed up."

Husted differs on the details of what reform should look like, however. He supports requirements that counties be kept intact and maps get bipartisan, but said “representational fairness” would be difficult to legally define or to achieve.

Like the secretary and the Fair Districts coalition, The Enquirer editorial board would like to see the General Assembly give Ohioans a reasonable redistricting reform measure to vote on. We're open to what it looks like, beyond keeping communities together and requiring bipartisan support.

The General Assembly will have some new faces when it reconvenes early next year, and we urge them to get serious about this issue. Fair Districts can pressure lawmakers to act by continuing to pursue a citizens' initiative, and proceed to the ballot if they continue to resist.

Voters have said clearly that they're unhappy, and civic and elected leaders alike must respond. This is too important to risk not getting fixed before the 2020 Census. 2017 must be the year of redistricting reform.

What's next?

Fair Districts = Fair Elections welcomes comments on its proposal at www.fairdistrictsohio.org. The coalition expects to move forward on a citizens' initiative in late winter, Catherine Turcer said. Voters can also contact their state representatives and senators to urge them to take action in the General Assembly.

Questions that must be answered by any congressional redistricting proposal:

Who will decide the lines? The 2015 Ohio Constitution amendment moved control of the General Assembly's lines to a seven-member commission made up of the governor, secretary of state, state auditor and four legislative appointees, one from each major party in each chamber. Fair Districts wants the same board to also decide congressional districts rather than leaving it in the hands of the General Assembly.

If the redistricting commission draws congressional lines, how many of the seven members must approve a map for it to be accepted? The 2015 changes for state redistricting require agreement from two members of the minority party for the state House and Senate maps to be in affect the full 10 years. If approved on a simple majority vote, they would have to be redrawn after four years.

What criteria must the commission use in deciding lines? Some possibilities include district compactness, competitiveness and representational fairness.

How public should the map-drawing process be? Should the public have an opportunity to comment on a proposed map before a final decision?

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Northern Kentucky is not a member of the House Freedom Caucus. An earlier version of this story was incorrect.